Husband just lot his job yesterday, totally unexpectedly. I work a full time job and part time job that can cover about 70% of our expenses. We're going to end up being about $700/month short until he gets a new job. Previously, like 70% of his monthly income paid for all of our expenses, so everything I make plus the other 30% of his monthly income is in savings. As of now, if I wasn't working at all, we'd have about 4 months of $ to pay for our house and bills... so we are doing okay. We can also dip into our retirement if need be. I expect him to find another job in the next 4 months. In addition, he's going to start driving for Uber to make some extra cash. My mom has also offered to pay him some extra cash to do some gardening around her house. Our Bible study friends are helping out by bringing dinner over tonight. We have a really good support group of friends and family, but I hate depending on people for other things.
Anyways, what are some little things we can do to cut corners and save $? We are going to give up soda (Diet Coke is my guilty lunchtime pleasure that keeps me awake the second half of the day), and we are very good about turning off unnecessary lights. We take short showers and only run our dishwasher maybe once a week. We don't really go out to eat. We're going to start shopping for groceries at WalMart and the 99 Cent Store instead of Trader Joe's. What else can we do?
I spent yesterday in full on panic mode and totally had an emotional breakdown over this. We just bought our brand new house in August and things have been going really great for us. Neither of us expected him to lose his job (obviously), and I had been planning to quit my part time job because I'm tired of working 7 days a week... now it seems like I'm going to be stuck with the part time job until he gets a new job. We had also planned on starting a family this summer, and now that looks like it's going to be pushed back. I just felt really bummed out and sad all day yesterday.
Now that my panic phase is over, I'm ready to look at this seriously and buckle down for the next couple months until he gets a new job offer. Any advice you can give on random ways you've found to save money would be great.
Thanks in advance.
January 10, 2017 at 02:37PM
